I don’t know my own address

Remember how I was freaking out because I hadn’t gotten the invitation that I’d mailed to myself? Yeah, that’s because I forgot to put our apartment number on it and it it was returned to my parents’ house as undeliverable. I’m awesome, no?

But, look how pretty my handwriting is! It took me 162 envelopes to address 117 invitations. I have only 8 left!

Also, please note the awesome stamp. Only a handful of people appear to have noticed it :( But my little brother Daniel commented on liking the “font” I used to address his invitation. Silly brother, that’s no font, that’s D’Nelion handwriting, a la 3rd grade writing sample! I just wish my lines were more straight and that my numbers were fancier looking. Oh well. All invitations should be delivered at this point, and if not, my dad should see more in the mailbox at home in the next few days.

Read Full Post »

check your mail box this week

’cause if you got a magnet in the mail 6+ months ago, you’ll be getting an invitation! The bulk of today was spent doing wedding-related activities. We got up at a reasonable hour (8:30 on a weekend is EARLY for us), and went into Denver to meet with a potential DJ (I’ll sign the contract later this week). Then we did some shopping at our favorite Japanese market, stopped at Costco for lunch, stamps, and cheese, and then stuffed envelopes ALL AFTERNOON.

Seriously, who knew that it would take 3 hours to stuff and address 120 inner envelopes, match them to their outer envelopes (they were both mostly in order), and then stamp and seal them? At least I got the last of the outer envelopes addressed on Thursday!

Back to the DJ, he reminded us that we’re not that far out from our wedding date, and that anyone who might want to make a toast should start planning their speech now and let us know so that we can be sure to give you the microphone.

Side note: my friend Andrea is probably getting married at this beautiful estate in March, so I’ll share a picture of it with you all, because I’m a lazy-ass blogger and am not taking a photo of all my invitations lined up. In fact, I haven’t taken a single photo of an invitation, not even the ones I’m sending to the Obamas or the Ritters! Ha, take THAT blob-o-sphere! I rebel by blogging?

Elm Court, Lenox, Mass.

Read Full Post »

bustin' out the fancy writin'

I’ve started to address our wedding invitations. I’m about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through, as of tonight. Boy am I glad that we got extra envelopes though, I think I mess up about 1 in 7. I’ve also discovered that I have trouble with double Ns, like in Vienna, or Minnesota. They just turn into never ending, undulating doodles or get mooshed together into a 4 humped M. Oh, and I somehow forgot how to write most of the capitol letters and am having to re teach myself.

Yes, I know I don’t HAVE to address them in cursive, but my regular handwriting looks too pedestrian and I tried printing/tracing fancy script on, to get perfectly centered addresses, but tracing addresses is really hard! Even when I found a font that looked like my handwriting, only more evenly spaced.

If my handwriting on your invitation is less than A+, please keep in mind that I’m not sure that I’ve written anything in cursive since the 8th grade (after that all my school papers were typed at home, or written in pencil for exams).

Thank you Franklin Sherman Elementary and Longfellow Middle School for teaching me how to write well and making me use it enough to remember 15-20 years later. Once I’m done, I don’t think I’ll ever have to write in cursive again, unless I really want to.

Stamps should arrive any day now, so hopefully I’ll get the invitations in the mail early next week. That gives people FIVE WEEKS to respond. Don’t make me send the invitation ninjas (our moms) after you for not RSVPing! If you want to keep your card, let me know, and I’ll send you another, OK?

Read Full Post »

Houston, we have a problem

I knew that our envelopes were square and that it would mean we’d need to pay an extra $0.20/envelope because of that, what I didn’t calculate was that by adding inner envelopes, the invitations are now over an ounce!!!! That means it now costs $1.05 to mail our invitations, and I somehow forgot about postage for the responses too.

At least the postage options are pretty for large denomination stamps (though they’ll all need supplemental postage):

And $2.08 to mail them internationally. Crapola.

That’s almost $200 in postage that I forgot to plan for. *&^#%$@!

Read Full Post »

opening packages is fun, too bad I missed it (yes, I’m still out of town)

Image by Ken's Oven via Flickr

Our invitations came in the other day, but I’m still down in Peru (ostensibly to help my mom pack out her apartment down here) and Ben opened them without waiting for me. I’m not terribly upset about that, but I am annoyed with the fact that we got extras for free. If I’d know we were going to get free extras, I would have ordered fewer! They’re printed in batches of 25, and I ordered 150, knowing that we’d need 120 and that 125 was too close a call for my comfort. Bugger. That would have saved us something along the lines of $40!  Grumble….. We could have used those $40 elsewhere in the budget!

Oh well, I’m excited to see the invitations when I get home! Look for yours in the mail some time in mid August. Now, I just have to decide if we’re inviting out friends kiddos or not. I’d really like to, but my mom is against it because then they’ll miss their nap times and might not be the little angles I know them to be when their schedules are not disrupted.

Really, I want photos like this one, from my friend Jennifer’s wedding a few years ago:

cello player friend, her baby, Jennifer & Jonathan

Read Full Post »

INVITATIONS

ducksandbooks.com custom zazzle stamp (2.1 x 1.3") DRAFT

I’ve ordered our invitations!!! I’m doing a little happy dance. It took lots of window shopping and fussing to finally decide on what to get, and now they’ll be here when I get back from Peru!

Ben got some nice pens for me from the campus store, so I’ll start addressing envelopes as soon as I get back. Wow, time is FLYING! We hope to have the invitations in the mail by my birthday (August 8th), that gives me 3 weeks to address 118 invitations and find appropriate stamps. Keep your eyes open and check your mail regularly in mid August!

Deena • Baruch Benyamin

PS- if someone wants to sponsor some zazzle stamps for us, that would ROCK! I really want some custom stamps with our website on them, because our website (which I’ve obviously spent too much time on) isn’t on our invitations anywhere! Darn etiquette, I sometimes feel obligated to follow it.

Read Full Post »

invitations II

Oh boy. Invitations have caused much drama. We decided to stick with the original modestly priced ones, from weddingpaperdivas.com. I ordered a sample for $1, and they invitations were great, but I decided that the envelopes aren’t opaque enough. This sent me on a wild goose chase all over creation for better envelopes, but I ended up back where I started, but with inner envelopes!

Pure Style, weddingpaperdivas.com

Inner envelopes, and a return address embosser, in the same font as the invitation! These invitations are turning out fancier than I’d intended, but Ben thinks they’re perfect because they convey the tone of our wedding well: modern/not casual/not fancy. Sweet. Happy Ben = happy Deena!

My parents actually already have a hand held embosser with return address plates (it came with the house), but for some reason it was printed upside down. My dad mailed it to me because I thought it would be useful, but the only thing it’s good for is stamping book pages or making your own stationery because you have to stamp from the top to get it to print right side up. Envelope flaps need to be stamped from the bottom, or the text will come out upside down!

While I was in a stationary state of mind tonight (and ordering the embosser plates), we also ordered a 100 sheets packet of cover paper for wedding programs, matching escort cards, ribbon (for binding the programs), and my bouquet. I’m going to be walked down the isle by both parents, and will be holding a family Tanakh (with all of my maternal family’s births, deaths, weddings, etc.) so I’m not going to have flowers, but I figured I need something to keep my hands busy during photographs and paper is much more me than flowers. As an added bonus, I know I’m not allergic to PAPER mini magnolias!

Mini Magnolia Flower Kit, paper-source.com

Read Full Post »